" It's a relatively impersonal project for Green, though the performances are never less than genuine and the two stories unfold in graceful counterpoint as the movie hurtles toward a harrowing and heartbreaking conclusion. "

" The writing and the performances are such that as things go from bad (sad motel-room affairs) to worse (a 4-year-old gone missing), the film's characters get inside your skin, your soul. It's enough to make you want to cry. "

" The sabotage plotting, sometimes engaging dialogue, visual inventiveness, a distant soundtrack and some occasionally gripping performances only add up to a film that leaves one feeling as frozen as those snow angels. "

Gordon Green's previous work (most notably All the Real Girls) has earned him critical accolades and Snow Angels went over fairly well at Sundance. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there are some really great things about it--namely the performances, particularly by Sam Rockwell (Charlie's Angels, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), who just drips with talent, and the endearing Michael Angarano (Will and Grace, Lords of Dogtown).

But there are some odd things, too, like Gordon Green's deliberate choice to make the time signature obscure--think early '80s rugs and big TVs and then a cell phone out of nowhere. And the movie feels extremely personal, so much so that you expect to find out that it's a story from Gordon Green's own past, when in fact it is actually based on a novel by Stewart O'Nan.

Ultimately, though, the thing about Snow Angels is that it is just remarkably heavy--to the point of being off-putting. In the end, it feels sort of like a poor man's version of American Beauty, stripped of all the good parts and devoted only to a low-budget wallowing in misery that will leave you shell-shocked and depressed on your way out of the theater. Gordon Green's movies are usually pretty hard to find in the theater, and in this case, that might be just as well.